In The Painter's Practice, James Cahill reveals the intricacies of the painter's life with respect to payment and patronage--an approach that is still largely absent from the study of East Asian art. Drawing upon such unofficial archival sources as diaries and letters, Cahill challenges the traditional image of the disinterested amateur scholar-artist, unconcerned with material rewards, that has been developed by China's literati, perpetuated in conventional biographies, and abetted by the artists themselves. His work fills in the hitherto unexplored social and economic contexts in...

Creating paintings with poetic resonances, sometimes with ties to specific lines of poetry, is a practice that began in China in the eleventh century, the Northern Sung period. Cahill vividly surveys its first great flowering among artists working in the Southern Sung capital of Hangchou, probably the largest and certainly the richest city on earth in this era. He shows us the revival of poetic painting by late Ming artists working in the prosperous city of Suchou. And we learn how artists in Edo-period Japan, notably the eighteenth-century Nanga masters and the painter and haiku poet Yosa...

In this groundbreaking book, James Cahill expands the field of Chinese pictorial art history, opening both scholarly studies and popular appreciation to vernacular paintings, "pictures for use and pleasure." These were works commissioned and appreciated during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the non-elites of Chinese society, including women. Traditional Chinese collectors, like present-day scholars of Chinese painting, have favored the "literati" paintings of the Chinese male elite, disparaging vernacular works, often intended as decorations or produced to mark a special...

How does a writer learn to write? For Tim Lewis, 27, the answer arrives in the form of Joy, an impossibly desirable, dreadlocked, passion-loving beauty. Fired from an L.A. inner-city teaching nightmare, Tim is catapulted to San Francisco to pursue a last ditch, secret dream to be a writer. But before he leaves, his father, dying of cancer and unhappy with Tim's decision, makes him promise: he must write something beautiful for his dad. But the man has roughly six months to live and nothing like a little pressure. In San Francisco, Tim meets Joy and discovers her odd quirk: if he conjures...

Piet Mondrian or Andy Warhol Damien Hirst or Banksy whose artworks have been the most influential? The most shocking? The most expensive? How about their versatility or critical reception? These playing cards allow art lovers of all ages to play their favorite artists against each other to discover who rules the art world."